Now with Yanks, Sizemore hopes knee injuries over

By RONALD BLUM -
Associated Press -
Friday, February 21, 2014

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) - Scott Sizemore eagerly took the field two years ago for the Oakland Athletics’ first full-squad workout. After four seasons in the minor leagues and two more bouncing between farm teams and the majors, he arrived at spring training as Oakland’s likely opening-day starter at third base.

He was in position at age 27 to become a major league regular. But then his career came undone with brutal quickness, a reminder the difference between stardom and the sidelines can be a connective tissue less than 1½ inches long and a half-inch thick.

“That’s some pretty serious shoes to fill, but I’m glad they at least gave me a really good number,” Sizemore said.

On that sun-splashed morning at Phoenix’s Papago Park on Feb. 25, 2012, everything seemed normal, players getting back on the field and remembering the routine of the 7½-month grind that is Major League Baseball. Most attention was on Manny Ramirez, embarking on yet another comeback attempt.

Sizemore moved to his right to field a ball hit by Mike Gallego, Oakland’s third base coach, the type of grounder Sizemore had gloved tens of thousands of times on hundreds of infields.

“I went to plant and go,” Sizemore recalled Friday, “I remember specifically, in my mind, I thought, ‘My leg’s not coming with me.’”

When he thinks about it now, the memory is like a slow-motion replay.

“I looked down and I just saw my knee like do this,” he said, taking his two hands, putting them a few inches apart and making a wave motion. “It literally was out of my control. My body went to go, and I just saw my knee go whock! And it popped on the way back. I took a couple hops, and as I’m hopping I heard the coach that rolled the ball go, ‘Oh … “

Sizemore had broken his left fibula in 2009 in the Arizona Fall League but never had any knee issues. He hobbled out of that opening workout on crutches, found out after an MRI that he had torn his left anterior cruciate ligament and had surgery March 21, when Dr. Douglas Freedberg replaced the damaged ligament with part of Sizemore’s hamstring tendon.

“Broken heart right here. Safe to say I’ve cried more over baseball than anything in my life,” Sizemore’s wife Brooke tweeted at the time.

Sizemore worked hard to rehabilitate the knee, and made it back for spring training 2013. The A’s shifted him back to second base, but he wasn’t yet ready to be a regular. He started Oakland’s third game of the year, then sat the bench until he was in the lineup for game No. 8, at the Los Angeles Angels.

In the fourth inning that night, Mike Trout hit a blooper into short right field and Sizemore chased after it, with his back to the plate. He took about 10 strides, then landed awkwardly as he veered slightly to avoid right fielder Chris Young. Sizemore limped as he walked slowly back to the first base dugout with Oakland head trainer Nick Paparesta, who put a supportive arm on his back.

Sizemore’s comeback season was over on April 9 after two games and six at-bats.